Greetings! I wanna find out if there are other ways to use old tires in our gardens besides them for growing containers. How we clean old tires from the toxic waste and the mess that come with it? I wanna find out if we can grow taller crops such as corn and others. Please jump in if y'all need me. Out!
For many years people thought it a good idea to use old railroad ties to make raised beds. Then more recently some have suggested treated lumber. But either of them is a very poor choice. They are impregnated with very toxic chemicals that "protect" the wood from bacterial action. And those chemicals and toxins are exceedingly bad for all other life as well. The chemicals leach from the wood over time, and straight to the soil and right into your food.
It's much the same with tires. They are made using very toxic chemicals. There is just nothing natural or healthful in a tire. Just really bad stuff. And those tires break down over time, and just like the RR ties and treated wood, right into your soil and vegetables. Using tires for raised beds, or for building walls for homes, is a very poor idea.
I'm pretty resigned to environmental contaminants , but I still don't think tires are ever gonna be a good idea in direct contact with garden soil.
It's the heavy metals that scare me.
The best I can imagine for them is as the walls of a plastic lined container.
I have both the plastic and the tires, but I have not found this to be a compelling use.
I can see making fence post out of tire treads screwed to each other, but only if they were cast in concrete.
My MIL did the growing-vegitables-in-tires-to-keep-weeds-out method last year, and it worked well for her. But there is always that concern about contaminants. I'm not so sure its something I'd do. As for other uses, ...
I cannot see what toxic compounds are in tyres. They are basically natural and synthetic rubber, steel and materials that most people wear most days such as rayon, nylon, and other polymer materials. The latex to make rubber has carbon added to it for structure. I cannot find any actual science that says any part of a tyre is toxic as in breaks down into nasties. most are some form of hydrocarbon.
I think that it is easy to overlook synthetic rubber as a contaminant. It doesn't sound bad because rubber in my mind brings ideas of latex.
What is synthetic rubber? It is just another form of plastic (petroleum-derived product).
When it wears, it releases microplastics into the environment to do what microplastics do best. Bioaccumulate. I believe Yale put out a study saying that something like seventy eight percent of ocean microplastics comes from synthetic tire rubber.
I was concerned when i saw that many playgrounds were starting to use tire crumb (ground up tires with the steel belts removed). How did this get approved? I see the same problems with using tires in a garden, though the surface area exposed for VOC off-gassing, which is one of the concerns, is way less than with crumb. Yes, they look cutely hillbilly, especially if you paint them pastel colors. Cute like flowers growing out of a toilet.
But here are a few of the concerns:
According to the EPA, benzene, mercury, styrene-butadiene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and arsenic, among several other chemicals, heavy metals and carcinogens, have been found in tires. Studies have found that crumb rubber can emit gases that can be inhaled. When the material gets hot, it can increase the chances that volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and chemicals can “off-gas,” or leach into the air.
"~~~ I'm pretty resigned to environmental contaminants."
It's fairly hard to avoid air pollution from nearby factories or from the exhaust from over flying aircraft. It's tough to fully purify the water you drink when it comes from a municipal water plant. If you just want to enjoy having fish at a restaurant, you can count on the probability of having to consume the micro plastics the fish consumed in the polluted ocean water. Pollution of one kind or another is ubiquitous in this world we have created.
But for gosh sakes, we certainly have little need to purposely add to the problem by bringing onto an into our farms, land and gardens, new and even possibly worse forms of pollution. We simply must think more long term than that. What we do today in a place might not affect us over the next little while that we occupy that space. But what are we leaving our children and all future generations? Sometimes creating a little pollution is nearly impossible. We have all occasionally thoughtlessly dropped a candy wrapper. But to run a factory and dump the waste into the ocean or a ditch somewhere, is a crime against Earth. To purposely improperly spread that waste or obsolete product on your own personal scale is nearly as bad.
Guessing you will have trouble with answer here as basically everyone is going to consider tires toxic glick central. As best I can tell this is one of those don't let the truth interfere with a good story things.
I researched it when I was wanting to do an in ground greenhouse. The thinking was if I cut the upper side wall out of part of big scraper tires I could build a raised earth berm back wall that would give me a number of growing levels by off setting the tire rows. Wouldn't rot, good color for absorbing heat, cheap, readily available. The catch was nearly everyone I talked to considered tires toxic. As best I could tell the threats were small but perception is the game and truth does not matter.(not that I was totally sure what the truth is). As best I could tell from my reading the primary threat is zinc with some threat from aromatic hydrocarbons. The rest of the "heavy" metals discussion about tires seemed to be mostly bunk as most soils contain more heavy metals than the tires.(look at the ppm's for various soils and for the tires) Zinc is present in quantities in the tires and is a bit of a threat but it is mostly physically and chemically bound in the tire was point one. It is in a molecular form that dissolves poorly and when it does get leached into the soil mineralizes such that it is even less chemically mobile. As for the aromatic hydrocarbons most of them exist in decaying plant matter so life forces actually work to neutralize them and a greenhouse is better vented anyway. Funny thing here. Ran into a number of people who were all enthused about earthship homes done with tires and there they were the greatest thing ever while greenhouse done with the same material is toxic. In the end gave up on the idea because of the bad press of the idea no matter what the truth is. I did not find any good science showing a threat or showing it was not a threat. Yes huge tire piles do have nasty leachate. But we are talking piles with 100,000s of tires. Are a few tires a real threat? Nearly everything can be a threat if you concentrate enough of it.
So I am going to say this is one where the truth does NOT matter. Accept that tires are totally toxic(real or imagined) and move on to other it dreams.
Where does a "properly" disposed of tire go?
From my understanding the second place after landfill is fuel for industrial processes like cement kilns or paper mills.
Actual tire recycling is rare.
Methods of recycling tires that don't send the material back into the environment are experimental, or theoretical.
Landfills dedicated to shedded tires is considered to be one of the better current solutions.
Most of us do not have the ability to dictate where in this system our used tires will end up.
Given these realities, I deem personal use that involves sequestration as equally environmentally responsible.
![[Logo]](/templates/default/mobile/images/mobile-permies-2015.png)
In the end gave up on the idea because of the bad press of the idea no matter what the truth is. I did not find any good science showing a threat or showing it was not a threat. Yes huge tire piles do have nasty leachate. But we are talking piles with 100,000s of tires. Are a few tires a real threat? Nearly everything can be a threat if you concentrate enough of it.
-A.png)
